ZEN: Images of "God" (Alan Watts audio)

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Zen teacher former Episcopal Rev. Alan Watts (First Unitarian, San Francisco), Roy of Hollywood Tuckman (KPFK.org, Sept. 14, 2014, 8:00 am)

Abyssinian maid, Ethiopian Empire, Africa, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan (Xanadu)

Empty blackness of space, colorized nebula (imgbase.info/wallpapervortex.com)

Imaginative scene, worlds in space (imgbase.info/wallpapervortex.com)

The Man Who Fell to Earth: Felix Baumgartner skydiving (yahoo.com)

Hypervelocity star in the akasha deva loka or "light being world" (Ben Bromley, U. of Utah)

• AUDIO: (The Love of Wisdom) Zen teacher Alan Watts' "Images of God" (28:47) alanwatts.org
  Sunday, 9-14-14 8:00 am

Buddhism and the God-Idea

Ven. Nyanaponika (BPS/ATI) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

The Goddess Black Barbie (KattisDolls.net)

Quite contradictory views have been expressed in Western literature on Buddhism's attitude toward the concept of "God" [the personal great Maha Brahma and the impersonal GOD or godhead Brahman] and gods [devas].

A study of the discourses (sutras) of the Buddha preserved in the Pali canon shows that the idea of a personal deity, a "creator god" conceived to be eternal and omnipotent, is incompatible with the ultimate reality described in the Buddha's teachings.

Misunderstood Kali (2012rising.com)

On the other hand, conceptions of an impersonal godhead [Brahman] of any description, such as world-soul and so on, are [not] excluded by the Buddha's teachings on anatta (impersonality, non-self, not-self, unsubstantiality, insubstantiality).

• Egolessness (anatta) is an indispensable Buddhist concept
• Hindu-Mahayana-Buddhism believes in soul, God
• The ultimate versus the conventional
• God in Buddhism 

In Buddhist literature, the belief in a [first cause, prime mover] creator god (issara-nimmana-vada) is frequently mentioned and rejected, along with other causes wrongly adduced to explain the origin of the world, for example, a world-soul, time, nature, and so on.

Symbolic conceptions of Kali (2012rising.com)

God-belief [a belief in this kind of "God"], however, is placed in the same category as those morally destructive wrong views which deny the karmic results of action, which assume a fortuitous origin of humans and nature, or teach absolute determinism.

 

These views are said to be altogether pernicious ["wrong views," miccha-ditthi], having definite bad results due to their effect on ethical conduct [here and now].

 

Theism, however, is regarded as a kind of karma-teaching insofar as it upholds the moral efficacy of actions. So a theist who leads a moral life may, like anyone else doing so, expect a favorable results [including favorable] rebirths [in the future when that karma, those "actions," ripen].

Bodhidharma (kaliedoscope.cultural-china.com)

One may possibly even be reborn in heavenly worlds that resemble one's own conception of such worlds, but they will not be of eternal duration even though one may expect them to be.

If, however, fanaticism induces one to persecute those who do not share one's beliefs, this will have grave consequences for one's future destiny. For fanatical attitudes, intolerance, and violence against others create unwholesome karma leading to moral degeneration and to [many] unhappy rebirths.

 

Although belief in God does not exclude a favorable rebirth, it is a variety of [the wrong view of] eternalism, a false affirmation of permanence rooted in the craving for existence, and as such an obstacle to final deliverance. More